The New Trump Show: ‘I’ve Gotten to Like This Room’ ~ The president has turned the abandoned briefing room into a new stage and he’s making it must-see TV.

Stripped of the weapon of his rallies, of “chopper talk,” of the sorts of set pieces to which the populace had grown accustomed over the three-plus years he’s been commander-in-chief, Trump as a president in crisis has engineered something different. While governors from New York to California have staged almost daily briefings, offering a traditional mixture of stern warnings and words of comfort, Trump has created something more like a show built on narrative surprises and populated with familiar characters—the good doctors, the bad reporters, the loyal lieutenants. And in the middle of it all, playing the role of the ringmaster, the marketer and the brander and the professed expert, is Trump.

His mood and his message have ebbed and flowed, alternately boasting and bashing, soothing and striking, intermittently solemn, flippant and peeved, flouting facts and shifting blame, underplaying dire projections and overselling potential vaccines.

“He is,” former Trump Organization executive Barbara Res told me, “being himself.”

The president’s political career has been shaped deeply by his experiences as the star of “The Apprentice,” for which he developed the “Mr. Trump” boardroom persona and his trademark judgmental pout. He entered the Oval Office urging aides to see his administration as a show in which he battles rivals, and he has duly done his part, serving up twists and turns and clear-cut conflicts with recurring and easily identifiable enemies (the press, the Democrats, “Sleepy Joe Biden,” “the Chinese virus”).